Gov. Cuomo: Inmates had sights on Mexico but ride backed out

New York Times

June 29, 2015

Photo: G.N. Miller, POOL / Associated Press

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FILE - In this June 15, 2015, file photo, Joyce Mitchell appears before Judge Mark Rogers in Plattsburgh (N.Y.) City Court for a hearing. She is charged with helping Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility on June 6. While Richard Matt and David Sweat counted their final hours to freedom, prison tailor-shop instructor Mitchell was heading to a hospital with chest pains driven by a panic attack. She was leaving the hospital when she learned that Matt and Sweat were on the loose and that state police were looking for her and her husband, Lyle, a fellow industrial instructor at the prison. (G.N. Miller/NY Post via AP, Pool, File) less

FILE - In this June 15, 2015, file photo, Joyce Mitchell appears before Judge Mark Rogers in Plattsburgh (N.Y.) City Court for a hearing. She is charged with helping Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from the ... more

Photo: G.N. Miller, POOL / Associated Press

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David Sweat (left) is hospital- ized. Richard Matt is dead.

David Sweat (left) is hospital- ized. Richard Matt is dead.

Photo: /Associated Press

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Gene Palmer, a former corrections officer at Clinton Correctional Facility, leaves court in Plattsburgh, N.Y., where his lawyer formally waived Palmerâs felony hearing and requested that the matter be transferred to county court, June 29, 2015. Palmer is charged with helping convicts David Sweat and Richard Matt escape Clinton Correctional. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/The New York Times) less

Gene Palmer, a former corrections officer at Clinton Correctional Facility, leaves court in Plattsburgh, N.Y., where his lawyer formally waived Palmerâs felony hearing and requested that the matter be ... more

Photo: IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST, STR / New York Times

Gov. Cuomo: Inmates had sights on Mexico but ride backed out

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The escaped killers David Sweat and Richard Matt had intended to go to Mexico before their plan unraveled when a prison worker accused of helping them did not show up with her car, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.

Cuomo said that Sweat, who is hospitalized for gunshot wounds sustained during his capture on Sunday, had “relayed some information” to investigators.

That information included the plot with the prison worker, Joyce Mitchell, Cuomo said.

“They would kill Mitchell’s husband and then get in the car and drive to Mexico, on the theory that Mitchell was in love with one or both of them,” the governor said on the Albany, New York, public radio show “Capitol Pressroom.”

When Mitchell backed out, the men then headed north toward Canada, Cuomo said.

Cuomo also said that Sweat, 35, parted ways with Matt about five days ago. “Sweat felt that Matt was slowing him down, as a matter of fact,” the governor said. Matt was killed by a federal agent on Friday.

Sweat’s condition was upgraded to serious, from critical, after doctors at Albany Medical Center determined he did not need surgery, the hospital announced Monday. He will remain there “for at least a few days while his condition stabilizes,” the hospital stated.

On Sunday afternoon, Sweat was spotted jogging along a road in Constable, New York, a few miles south of the Canadian border, by a State Police sergeant, the authorities said. He fled from the sergeant, Jay Cook, who opened fire as Sweat headed toward a tree line and shot him twice in the torso, the police said.

When found, Sweat “had a bag with him that had a number of supplies,” Cuomo said.

The supplies included maps, tools, insect repellent and Pop-Tarts, the governor said.

It was not clear where Sweat obtained the items, but he and Matt had been breaking into hunting cabins that dot the remote woods of the Adirondacks.

The men, both convicted murderers, were discovered missing from their maximum-security cells at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, on June 6, setting off a three-week manhunt. Mexico was familiar territory to Matt. In 1998, while wanted in New York for murder, he stole his half brother’s car and fled to Matamoros. He killed a man in Mexico and spent nine years in prison there.

The other prison worker charged with helping the convicts is Gene Palmer, a corrections officer arraigned last week and accused of giving the men pliers and a screwdriver.